The Glad Game
From Chicken Soup for the Soul: Making Me Time
By Polly Hare Tafrate

Once you begin to take note of the things you are grateful for, you begin to lose sight of the things that you lack.
~Germany Kent

The first clue that this isn’t going to be a normal summer starts in April when my husband’s cardiologist tells him that a leaky valve in his heart needs to be replaced. Since I’ve been spending the past few summers alone at our New Hampshire lake cottage, this is not welcome news. I rationalize that there will be plenty of time for this operation and recovery before I leave in July. After that, Ray can go back to what he loves best — watching Yankees games on his big-screen TV in our air-conditioned house — and I can return to the lake with its gentle breezes and warbling loons. How wrong could I be? Plenty, as it turns out.

A new procedure for replacing heart valves is offered at some large hospitals. Rather than cracking open the chest, the surgeon threads a new valve through a vein and inserts it into the heart. Before this can be done, there is a long list of Medicare-driven criteria that must be met. First on this list is a vein catheterization to see if it’s open enough to insert a new valve. Ray and I spend the day at the hospital — he in a bed, me in the waiting room trying to push the what-if scenarios out of my mind. (Keep reading)